Liquid crystal displays (LCD's) are well known and typically used as visual display screens for numerous devices such as laptop (notebook) computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), camera screens, cell phones, camcorders, DVD players, electronic game devices, or navigation screens, and can generally successfully operate in high-brightness environments, such as in a car, plane, boat, or a room with windows. LCD's can be arranged as transmissive backlit devices, reflective front-lit devices, or transitional hybrid devices. All three types have at least one polarizing layer that selectively allows light (either monochrome or selective colors) to pass there through to form images on the LCD screen.
Typically, two electrode layers supported on glass substrates straddle a liquid crystal layer. The liquid crystals of the liquid crystal layer are arranged together with electrodes from both electrode layers in a matrix of individually controllable cells. Both substrates also support polarizing filter films. Local electric fields generated by electrode pairs associated with each cell twist the intervening liquid crystals to rotate polarization of light passing through the crystals. One of the polarizing filter films admits polarized light into the crystals and the other polarizing filter film either passes or blocks the further passage of the light depending on the polarization state of light transmitted through the liquid crystals. For producing color images, a color filter array is mounted on one of the substrates, and individual cells within defined groups are aligned with different color filters (e.g., red, green, blue). Each such group forms a pixel, and the polarization states of the cells within each group can be controlled for forming pixels having individually addressable colors.